Total Depravity

With lowly love, and loving trust, and trustful obedience, we would come to Thee now, O Lord. With Thee is the fountain of life. All our seeing is by Thy light, and all our joys are in the drinking of the river of Thy pleasures. Help us, we beseech Thee, drawn by Thy grace, and driven by our sins, and knit into such close communion with Thyself, that there may flow into our hearts the life, the light, the joy, which Thou dost mean us to possess. We acknowledge that we, by our own faults, have been dead in trespasses and sins. We acknowledge that we have loved darkness more than the light of life. We acknowledge that we have sought, and in some partial measure found, our joys elsewhere than in Thee. And we come to Thee now, not without some sense of our follies, and beseech Thee that Thou wouldst deliver us from the snares of falsely fixed desires, and wouldst keep us from the folly of seeking in the world for what it can never give, and wouldst stir us up that we may take hold upon Thee, and laying hold of Thee may find that we have Thee for our very own.

Fallen man is wholly departed from God; and is become altogether selfish; seeking at all times his own things …. One would have supposed, that man, however fallen, should at least have given a precedence to his God: but he chooses rather to be a god unto himself, and to consult, in the first place, what will be most conducive to his own ease, or interest, or honour. If the gratification of self, in any respect, be found contrary to the declared will of God, the authority of God is set at nought; the honour of God overlooked, as unimportant; and the pleasure, whatever it may be, is pursued, without restriction or remorse. From their fellow-man, indeed, they feel some restraint; but from God, none at all. As far as he is concerned, they say, “Our lips are our own: Who is lord over us?” …. In truth, man in his fallen state does not admit any competition between God and him. He chooses rather to “cast God behind his back,” and to live “without him in the world.” “The things of Jesus Christ” do not at all engage his thoughts. He never asks himself, ‘What would the Lord Jesus Christ wish me to do? What will please him? What will honour him? What will advance his glory in the world?’ These are considerations which never enter into his mind. Nor is this the case with any one particular description of persons only: it is the same with all persons, of every age, of every country, of every condition. From infancy to old age there is the same regard for self, to the utter exclusion of every thing that relates to Christ. There may be indeed, and often is, in ungodly men, a great concern about their own sect or party in the Church; which they, perhaps, would call a regard for Christ himself. But this is nothing more than a carnal principle, precisely similar to that which actuates men in relation to their own society or country. There is in it no real regard for the Lord Jesus Christ himself, but only for the particular party to which they belong: and, whatever construction they may put upon their actions, God, who tries the heart, will comprehend them under the censure of my text, as “seeking their own things, and not the things of Jesus Christ.” “They are empty vines, because they bring forth fruit only to themselves.”